Society’s interest in the authenticity and quality of food is on the rise. Quality is one of the most valued characteristics when choosing which foods to consume; however, its objective description is a very challenging task. In this context, the labeling of food products is practically the only tool available to assess the quality of food and select the products that are consumed. In addition, rigorous controls are required by society to guarantee the integrity and authenticity of food and prevent fraudulent practices.

One of the research lines of the group focuses on the development of analytical methodologies based on liquid chromatography with spectroscopic, UV-vis and fluorescence detection, and coupled to mass spectrometry, for the characterization, classification and authentication of food products, as well as for fraud prevention. Two approaches can be applied through targeted and non-targeted methodologies. Targeted methods are based on determining specific families of bioactive compounds, such as polyphenols, which can be used as markers. Non-targeted methods, however, are based on recording instrumental signals, without the need to know the compounds which generate them, to be used as metabolomic fingerprints of the samples. The use of chemometric methods such as principal component analysis (PCA) or partial least squares-discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) is essential for the characterization and classification of samples using either the content of bioactive substances as chemical descriptors (in targeted methodologies) or the metabolomic fingerprints (in non-targeted methodologies). Besides, adulterant percentages in the samples are quantified by partial least squares (PLS) regression. Regarding the food problems that are currently being worked on in the group, we can highlight the characterization, classification, and authentication of paprika with protected designation of origin (PDO), coffee, tea, chocolate, wine, food supplements, and bee products (honey, royal jelly, propolis).